Tag Archives: behaviour

Many of the most significant incidents of poor behaviour in schools are in fact caused by students responding badly to the consequences of a prior, and much lesser, misdemeanour. We can all picture the scene – a student who when picked up for horsing around in a corridor decides to argue their case, walk off, or explode with anger. It is these situations that create so many behaviour problems for schools. And they can often be avoided.

It comes down to the difference between challenge and confrontation. Challenge corrects poor behaviour. Confrontation offends poorly behaving students. When we confront instead of challenging we get escalation, anger, and seriously bad behaviour.

The nature of a confrontation is that you respond to it. A confrontation is combative, and invites retaliation. It provokes the fight or flight reflexes so ingrained in us, which is why they lead to students either walking off or fighting back. The nature of challenge is that you rise to it. A challenge is a statement of higher expectations, and an invitation to reach them.

By learning to challenge instead of confront we can significantly reduce the number of behaviour incidents in our schools. Here are three key differences between confrontation and challenge:

Challenge is directed at the problem, confrontation is directed at the person
Challenge is clear and direct. It states the problem precisely and concisely, leaving no room for misunderstanding. Confrontation, on the other hand, is often vague and frequently personal. Stating that “you are running inside” is precise. Asking “what’s wrong with you?”, or making a claim like “your behaviour is awful”, is vague. This is dangerous, because comments like that allow students to project their own narrative onto your words. They can perceive it as a personal attack against which they must defend themselves, or an unjust statement they need to correct. Successful challenge avoids this risk by being 100% clear about the problem.

Challenge is respectful of the person, confrontation is dehumanising
The tone of a challenge is calm, assertive and respectful. It cares about the person being challenged, but will not compromise on their expectation of good behaviour. The tone of a confrontation is angry and disrespectful. Choosing a tone that cares is often enough to signify that you are challenging and not confronting. My acid test is whether I would speak to an adult that way if they were exhibiting the same behaviour. If not, I’ve erred into confronting.

Challenge is correcting, confrontation is damning
The essence of challenge is that you expect better. Challenge does not simply highlight poor behaviour, it corrects poor behaviour. Confrontation has given up. Clearly correcting behaviour and telling a student how they should act demonstrates that you believe they will. Merely chastising them for misbehaviour suggests that they’re not worth correcting.

When we catch students misbehaving we have a choice: to confront, or to challenge. If we confront, we invite combat and retaliation by offending the student and invoking their fight or flight reflex. Confrontation betrays low expectations of behaviour, and can make a student feel that they’ve been written off. If we challenge, we invite them to rise to that challenge. Our respectful tone and correcting instructions show them our high expectations, and make them feel valued.

Last year I got together with a group of colleagues and friends from outside of teaching to try and establish what the most important non-cognitive skills for our students were. We began by all privately making a list of the things we thought had been influential in determining our own success. Most responses were expected – resilience, curiosity, etc. But there was one thing that came up in all of our lists, which none of us had heard or read about before.

I described it as “the ability to assertively but politely disagree”. As a group we struggled for a good name. Then someone proposed we call it “strong soft”.

Strong soft is the skill of making a point both strongly and softly enough to be heard. Too strong and you’re written off as rude. Too soft and you’re ignored. Strong soft gets the balance right.

And I think it’s the most important skill we don’t teach at school.

Think of the rhetoric schools use when students, who don’t know any better, try to argue about a behaviour consequence or other instruction they think is unfair.

“Keep quiet”“Don’t answer back”“Don’t argue”

We’re telling them to keep it zipped and say nothing, but just to accept potential injustice.

The problem is that’s not what we actually mean! What we mean is something more like “I understand you think that this is unfair, and I’m more than happy to explain my decision-making to you and hear your view, but we’ll have to do that at a more appropriate time because right now I’m teaching and you’re learning”. But that just doesn’t roll off the tongue. The consequence of this is that we’re accidentally teaching students that they never have the right to complain or challenge authority, and unsurprisingly this is a teaching they often rebel against.

Instead of teaching this, we need to teach them strong soft. They need to learn how to challenge authority, but in a polite and appropriate manner. If they get into a habit of this at school, then (a) we have less disruption to learning, and (b) our students will be more successful adults, who don’t get taken for a ride but do get respected by their peers.

Here are the three components of strong soft to build into our students’ habits.

Choose a winning time
When the other person isn’t busy with an immediately pressing task, and generally when there’s no audience. If you challenge someone when they’re doing something more important then you’ll simply be ignored. If you do it in front of others then they won’t back down. Strong soft chooses a winning time, when the case will be heard and will get a fair hearing.

Choose a strong reason
The strength comes from clarity. Put your problem into one sentence. Clearly stating the issue and staying on topic forces the other person to respond directly to your point, and ensures the most important thing gets listened to.

Choose a soft tone
Too strong a tone makes you seem rude, and rude people have their arguments ignored. Instead of listening to your point, the listener concentrates on your tone and how it makes them feel. Instead, choose a calm and soft tone that works hard to be as polite as possible. This will impress your listener.

Strong soft comes down to: time, reason and tone. Strength comes from the reason, softness from the tone. If we train students in using strong soft when they need to question or challenge, we will significantly reduce the amount of disruption to lessons, and the trouble they get into. We’ll also be setting them up with the habits they need for adulthood.

Build strong soft into a habit by using the time, reason and tone mantra for the habit routine. Sentence starters like “This feels unfair to me because…” will also make the routine easier. The reward is being listened to – for many students often the first time they have been listened to when challenging authority.

It’s been missing for too long
During the holidays I was talking to a group of Year 11 boys during a break from revision. They were complaining that if a teacher upsets them then they get told to sit there and keep quiet. Surely this is hypocritical – the teachers can’t just sit there and take it if their boss does something unfair to them? Teachers write in the newspapers and go on strike, so why do they tell students to never question authority?

This was a lightbulb moment for me. They just didn’t get strong soft. They’d never seen it modelled by adults around them, and so didn’t understand how to politely disagree. We spent 10 minutes discussing how to challenge authority in a professional manner that gets you listened to, and they lapped up every word.

Strong soft is the most important skill we don’t teach at school. Right time, strong reasons, soft tone.

Last week, in the 1 Big Secret to Good Behaviour, I looked at how habit is at the heart of good behaviour in schools. Students, particularly those from the most challenging backgrounds, suffer from depletion of their self-control. Each bit of stress they face, every time they resist temptation or make a challenging decision, their ability to deal with the next challenge diminishes. This means that sometimes they just don’t have the self-control to delay gratification and make good decisions.

Habit is the solution to this problem. Habits bypass decision-making and go straight to action. Regardless of the state of self-control, habits get to work and manage your behaviour.

Classroom habits that stickGood behaviour in lessons is largely about classroom habits. Classroom habits govern all those routines and behaviours you want students to display in the room, such as entry and exit routines, holding whole class discussions, listening to explanations, using mini-whiteboards, etc. I’ve recently been working to add habits for silent work and practising grit to the mix as well. But it doesn’t matter what the habit is, if you want it to stick, you need to set it up right. Here are 7 keys to doing just that.

1. Plan meticulously
And I mean meticulously. This is where you shape the routine of the habit cycle (see this post if that’s unfamiliar). Vague plans let unintended behaviours creep into the routine. A meticulous plan gives you complete control. Here’s an example of a vague plan for an exit routine:

Complete exit question on exit card

Close folder, put pencil case, planner and homework in bag

Put folders in the cupboard

Stand behind chairs

Dismissed table by table

This is a meticulous plan:

Three minutes to complete exit question in silence. Timer projected on the board.

At the end of the timer: close folder, put pencil case, planner and homework in bag. Sit upright and wait.

Once the whole table is ready, teacher instructs tables (one at a time) to put folders in the cupboard.

Return and stand behind chairs silently.

Teacher dismisses table by table.

Map out your transitions: know whether they happen automatically or whether an instruction is required.
Plan your environment: know if you’re expecting silence, quiet or talking.
Prepare your red lines: know what behaviour is breaking the routine so it can be challenged immediately.

2. Design the cue
What is going to prompt students into this routine? A cue doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does need to be consistent. If you’re going to rely on a verbal cue, make sure you use the same sentence or phrase every time. Better still, incorporate other aspects of the environment into your cue. Think about the physical elements – for example, always standing in the same place, or including an action like opening the door, or closing your laptop lid. Visual elements can also be useful. Before using mini-whiteboards I have a slide with a picture of a whiteboard and a 15 second countdown. The more immersive the cue, the more clearly it will be heard.

3. Design the reward
What happens at the end of your routine? The reward is just as important as the cue for making a habit stick. A reward doesn’t need to be significant, but it does need to be reliable. A good exit routine could end with:

“Have a great afternoon, and thank you for working so well on those exit questions. Now I know what your best work on this topic looks like I can make sure your next lesson is designed right for you.”

Recognising that the routine was completed well and reminding students of its benefits will often be enough.

4. Teach it
Students won’t get the habit by osmosis, they need to be taught. Set aside some classroom time to explain the cue, routine and reward. Explain the rationale (helps with the reward later on), and all the steps you meticulously planned. Know that students won’t remember all the steps the first time, so have them written up as a guide and gradually remove them over time.

5. Practise to consistency
This is for both you and the students! Students will need some practice when you first teach the routine; enough to be able to follow it next lesson with a bit of prompting. Build practice time into lessons until the habit is embedded and the routine becomes automatic. This is a necessary and worthwhile investment. Time invested at this stage will save much more time later as your class runs smoother, behaving perfectly out of habit.

You’ll need to practice as well. Practise your cue so that it as consistent as possible. Mentally rehearse the classroom situation so that you know exactly what you are expecting. Think up situations where the routine goes wrong and rehearse your response. Your behaviour needs to be as reliable as possible for the habit to stick. An Assistant Head once told me that you can get students to do absolutely anything, as long as you ask and enforce consistently. They were right!

6. Do It Again
This is one of Doug Lemov’s top techniques from Teach Like a Champion. If students haven’t followed the routine properly, get them to Do It Again until they get it right. As soon as you allow some sloppiness into the routine, you’ll let sloppiness into the habit. Your meticulous plan needs to be followed to the letter every time, otherwise it just won’t stick.

7. Don’t give up
Do not give up on a habit because it doesn’t work at the start. Research suggests that habits take anywhere from 18 to 254 days to form – with the average taking 66 days. Easy habits take the least amount of time, but we’re still looking at a good few weeks. As a rule of thumb, you should wait at least a half term before adjusting something because “it’s not working”. You’ve probably just not had enough practise.

Good behaviour is all about self-control. It’s about the self-control to delay the gratification of having a chat/staring out of the window/arguing with Mr Smith/stabbing Jamie with a compass, in favour of the much less immediately appealing orderly learning environment. Students with self-control can resist these temptations to follow rules and learn.But self-control isn’t that simple.

It’s not a fixed trait that you either possess or don’t. Self-control is more like the power in a rechargeable battery: it empties with usage, before replenishing when plugged in. One ingenious experiment showed this by getting university students to attempt some impossible geometry puzzles. However before the puzzles they sat in a waiting room, and on the table was a bowl of radishes, as well as a bowl of freshly-baked chocolate cookies. Some students were allowed the cookies. Others were instructed to resist the cookies and eat the radishes instead.

The cookie-eaters attempted the puzzles for an average of 20 minutes before giving up. The cookie-resisters only held out for 8 minutes. Resisting the cookies used up their self-control.

Stress depletes self-control.

This means that a salesman who was stuck in a traffic jam will be less able to deal with a tricky customer, or a parent with a wailing baby will be less able to deal calmly with an overly playful child. It also means that often we will face students whose self-control is already significantly depleted by the time we see them. This might be because it’s the end of the day, and Period 4 French used up the last bit; or it might be because home is a chaotic hothouse of stress at the moment, and there’s no space to recharge. Either way, their ability to make good decisions has been depleted.

Depleted self-control means poor behaviour.

The tragedy is that the students who most need to value each minute of their education are often those whose self-control has depleted the most. Yet they will be the least able to resist temptations and behave well. It’s not that they don’t have self-control – they’ve just used it all up.

Students need to bypass the self-control system.

There’s no way of fixing their depleted reserves of self-control. They need to bypass the decision-making system, the one that sets up two options and asks them to choose. This system demands self-control, and there’s none of that left.

Habit is the cheat that unlocks good behaviour.

When you act out of habit you don’t need to stop and think, or to weigh up options and make a decision. You just act. Habits are driven by a different part of the brain (they’re tucked away in the basal ganglia, just above the top of the brain stem), and by a different neurological system. If students behave out of habit, then depleting self-control stops being a problem.

Habits are formed of cues, routines, and rewards.

Charles Duhigg’s book, the Power of Habit, teaches us about the habit loop. He says that every habit starts with a cue from the environment, is followed by a routine of behaviour, and culminates in a reward for completion.

For example, a habit of entering the classroom might begin with a cue of being greeted at the door by your teacher, followed by a routine of fetching your folder and immediately beginning the Do Now, and then finished with a reward of being verbally recognised and of completing the first task successfully. A student could choose to do this by using up self-control, or they could launch into autopilot as soon as they are greeted at the door – when habit kicks in and takes over.

The 1 Big Secret to good behaviour is to build habits.

In all schools, but particularly the most challenging, students will come to you with their self-control depleted. They will choose a course of bad behaviour, unless they have a habit of good behaviour that takes over. But there is no one habit called good behaviour – it’s a set of lots of small habits that deal with different cues.

One type of habit is the classroom routine.

Unless you work in an exceptionally well-organised school, you build this yourself. Decide the routine you want the class to have, then decide on a simple and clear cue as well as an appropriate reward. Once established, this habit will make sure your students perform standard tasks just as you wish, regardless of their self-control situation at that time.

Another is the ‘coping strategy’.

Because school isn’t all about predictable situations, students need habits that give them routines for the unexpected. A classic example is ‘counting to ten’ (cue = anger, routine = stop and count to ten, reward = increased calm/reduced risk of regretting a rash action). These are harder to design and teach, particularly for the lone teacher. However if done well they are the most transferable habits, and most useful for students’ futures.

Self-control depletes, habit rescues.

The more stressful situations a student has been through, or difficult decisions they’ve had to make, the lower their self-control will be. This makes it harder for them to behave well if relying on them to make good choices. It is this phenomenon that lies behind much bad behaviour. Habit can rescue students from this problem. It takes over their behaviour, avoiding the need for delayed gratification or tough decisions. If the right habits are in place, depleted self-control is no longer a problem.

How to build habits of good behaviour – coming soon…

Next week’s blog will be on building habits for classroom routines. Then in the coming weeks I’ll cover some different behaviour habits for more general situations, to help students around school and outside of it.

This blog is about the most powerful pedagogical lesson I’ve ever learned.In my first year of teaching I had to write an essay about two under performing students I taught. I chose two Year 9 boys, both of whom had potential but whose behaviour was stopping them from achieving. I followed the behaviour policy, experimented with all the standard behaviour advice, and had great support from more senior staff, but their learning just wasn’t good enough. In my frustration with the lack of help from the recommended education literature I turned to a reliable old friend: game theory.The ModelWhen coming into a lesson students can make one of two choices: to exert effort, or not to exert effort. In a school with a solid behaviour policy the students who choose not to exert effort may avoid work, complete only the bare minimum, or not spend enough time thinking to remember. In a school without a solid behaviour policy they may cause carnage.The lesson they are coming into can be one of two things: it can be a good lesson, or it can be a bad lesson. A good lesson is one where a student will learn if they exert effort; a bad lesson is one where they may not.These two sets of options give us a two by two matrix like this:For each pair of inputs there are two outcomes, the student’s level of academic and social success.Consider the student’s choice. If they choose to exert effort, they will get either the best or the worst outcome. If the lesson is a good one then they will be both academically and socially successful, having learned in class and appeared capable/talented in front of their peers. However if the lesson is a bad one then they will be both an academic and a social failure. They will not only have failed in learning, but by trying and failing they will be embarrassed as an incapable or unintelligent person.If a student chooses not to exert effort they receive a certain outcome – academic failure and social success. They have no chance of succeeding academically as they do not try to learn, however their rejection of learning guarantees that they never try and fail – their social status is secure.So how does a student make their choice? It depends on how likely they think the lesson is to be a good one. Call the student’s perceived probability of the lesson being good p. If p is high, then they’re more likely to choose to exert effort, as it’s more likely they will get the best available outcome.Risk AversionImagine p = 0.5; that is the probability of a lesson being good was 50%. In this case would a student choose to exert effort (gambling between the best and worst outcomes) or to not exert effort (accepting a certain, albeit mediocre, outcome)? Most students would, quite rationally, opt to not exert effort. The reason for this is that they’re risk averse. They’d much rather choose a strategy that guaranteed them an okay outcome than a strategy that gambles between a good outcome and a bad one.Because students are risk averse, p will have to be a high value before they would consider taking the risk of trying in class. Otherwise they’d rather settle for the poor yet certain outcome of academic failure complemented by social success.The goal for teachers is making p as high as possible so that all students, no matter how risk averse they may be, exert effort in school.What makes p?Remember that p is the student’s perception of the probability that the lesson will make sure they learn, if they exert effort. It’s not a measure of how good the lesson actually is, or anything to do with the actual quality of teaching. All that matters for the decision to exert effort is the student’s perception. This can be affected by a huge number of variables way beyond the teacher’s control. A very non-exhaustive list is:

the student’s self-esteem (p is low if “I can’t do it”)

the student’s prior experience of the subject (p is low if “I’ve never been able to learn this”)

stereotypes around learning (p is low if “people like me don’t do well at this”)

the school culture (p is low if “our school’s no good at this”)

Teacher quality plays a part (p is also low if “this teacher’s rubbish”), but is by no means the whole picture, and is often not the dominant factor.Raising pStudents reason by induction. Just as they believe that the sun rises tomorrow because it has always risen before, they believe that they’ll do badly in Maths because they’ve always done so before. Raising p is about breaking this damaging chain of reasoning, and the only way to go is by forcing them to experience success. This means that you plan your lesson to make sure that if they exert any effort at all, they will have some measurable success.A personal taleAt the start of January I took over a new class, who were pretty disengaged about Maths. Our first lesson wasn’t great – they came in expecting to do badly, and largely met their expectations. p was low. Our lessons since then have been an all out war of attrition to raise p, and make sure they believe that if they exert effort they absolutely will succeed. My p-raising lessons have a very distinct structure:

Clearly defined, ambitious lesson objective that seems daunting and will be rewarding if met.

Sub-skills or steps broken down, almost list-like.

Super-clear, often rehearsed explanation of the first step.

Guided practice on mini-whiteboards until everyone can do it.

Independent (timed) practice in books.

Short assessment to prove to them they have achieved that step.

Repeat 3-6 for next steps.

Final assessment to prove to them they have achieved the whole skill.

Repetition of my p-raising mantra – that everything in Maths looks scary and confusing at first, but easy once you’ve learned it.

If this looks remarkably like archetypal Direct Instruction, that’s because it is. The aim of these lessons are not to excite or engage in the popular sense. The aim is to convince all students, that if they try then they will learn. Discovery and inquiry have their place, but not when building confidence in fragile learners. Right now, I can’t risk any student not understanding at the end of the lesson.I worry that too often teachers are encouraged to deal with disengaged classes by engaging them in expert-type activities that leave them too open to the risk of failure, and entrench many students’ pre-existing beliefs that they will not learn even if they try. I emphatically aim to build up to meaningful mathematical inquiry with all my students, but only when they have the confidence to cope with the very real prospect of failure in this.A WarningTeaching a student whose p is low is very different to teaching a student whose p is high. The former needs nurturing, confidence-building treatment where they are protected from failure and practically forced to succeed. The latter need to build their confidence by trying, failing and trying again. Where one type of student needs a tight structure, the other often needs a more open one. The trick is in identifying each type of student, and teaching appropriately to both of them.ConclusionTrying is risky. Lots of students quite rationally decide not to bother in their lessons, because the evidence they have tells them the probability of them doing well isn’t high enough. They’d rather take the certain path of failing academically, but with the social kudos of never having tried. To tackle this disengagement we need to take the risk out of trying. Turning around disengagement means relentlessly ensuring that every lesson ends in success, until confidence is built sufficiently high that trying no longer seems risky.